After years of delays, California’s plans for the shrinking Salton Sea are finally starting to take shape.

A $383 million plan released by the state’s Natural Resources Agency on Thursday lays out a schedule for building thousands of acres of ponds and wetlands that will cover up stretches of dusty lakebed and create habitat for birds as the lake recedes.

The state’s blueprint focuses on constructing a patchwork of ponds that will spread out along the lake’s north and south shores during the next 10 years. Much of the funding has yet to be approved by the Legislature, and the construction projects will lag behind the pace of the sea’s decline, covering up only a portion of the vast expanses of lakebed that will be left dry and exposed to the desert winds.

But state officials say the plan represents a critical initial step in a long-term process of intervening to ameliorate a costly crisis at California’s largest lake. The immediate goals are to preserve a vital oasis for migratory birds and combat windblown dust in an area already struggling with some of the state’s highest asthma rates.

Time is of the essence because at the end of this year, the flows of water into the Salton Sea will decrease under a water transfer deal and the lake’s level will begin to decline more rapidly.

“This plan is a path forward to address air quality and habitat issues at the Salton Sea for the first time,” said Bruce Wilcox, the state’s assistant secretary for Salton Sea policy. “It’s a very important milestone.”

The state has budgeted $80.5 million so far to begin designing and building canals and ponds along portions of the shore. Wilcox said construction will start next year, and the plan outlines needs for additional funding that will be presented to lawmakers in Sacramento.

“That probably is the single most important thing, I think: It gives the Legislature a target,” Wilcox said. “We have a funding plan, an annual cost that we can give to the state Legislature, and that varies annually from $20 million to $40 million over the course of the next 10 years.”

Wilcox, who oversaw the plan’s preparation, was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015 to lead the state’s efforts at the Salton Sea. Wilcox had pledged in November to have the document ready by early January, but he said he underestimated how long it would take. An analysis of the projected costs contributed to the three-month delay.

The recent progress in creating a lineup of projects follows previous years of inaction, which had led to frustration among officials in Imperial and Riverside counties and prompted calls for the state to take on a larger role.

Last year, the lack of a state plan for the Salton Sea emerged as a sticking point in negotiations between California, Arizona and Nevada on a deal to temporarily use less water from the heavily tapped Colorado River, which has dwindled during 17 years of drought. Now that the state has a plan, a Colorado River agreement may become more achievable.

The state’s new strategy focuses on the next 10 years only and does not include long-term fixes. But Wilcox said he hopes having this plan in place will help clear the way for subsequent decisions on long-term strategies – which he anticipates might bring the total costs to between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.

One option to be studied, Wilcox said, involves building a “perimeter lake” that would stretch more than 60 miles along the lake’s west shore and cover up the dust-emitting lakebed. Another option would involve importing water to boost the lake’s levels. It could be seawater brought by canal from the Sea of Cortez or the Pacific, or brackish groundwater brought by pipeline from elsewhere in Southern California.

The idea of piping in water to the sea has long drawn passionate advocates and has long been dismissed by many in government as too costly or complicated. But it hasn’t been ruled out.

“We think it might be a viable solution,” Wilcox said. “I think in the past we never even considered it. I think now we are.”

While those long-term approaches are studied, the initial draft of the state’s 10-year plan says the immediate aims are to protect public health and wildlife and “mitigate harm to communities and ecosystems” as the sea declines.

A group of local and state leaders walk out onto the exposed lakebed of Red Hill Bay at the Salton Sea Leadership Tour, Thursday, March 16, 2017.

(Photo: Zoe Meyers/The Desert Sun)

A pragmatic 'incremental' approach

Over millennia, the depression in the desert known as the Salton Sink has at times been dry and at others has been a lake filled with water from the Colorado River.

Centuries ago, indigenous people fished along the shores of ancient Lake Cahuilla, which was six times larger than the present-day Salton Sea. The shores of that lake, which dried up by the time the Spanish explored the area, left lines on rocks that are still visible today as you drive down Highway 86 near the Salton Sea.

The current lake was accidentally created between 1905 and 1907, when Colorado River water broke through irrigation canals in the Imperial Valley and flooded into the basin. Since then, the lake has been sustained largely by water flowing from the Imperial Valley’s farms, which produce alfalfa, wheat and vegetables such as carrots and Brussels sprouts.

The Imperial Irrigation District holds the largest single entitlement to water from the Colorado River. And under the landmark 2003 water transfer deal known as the Quantification Settlement Agreement, the district is selling increasing amounts of water to the Coachella Valley Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority. Last year, the deliveries of water under the deal totaled 141,000 acre-feet, or 46 billion gallons. In 2026, that amount will have more than doubled to 303,000 acre-feet, or 98 billion gallons.

The deal also called for the Imperial district to deliver flows of “mitigation water” to the sea during the first 15 years, a period that was intended to give state agencies time to prepare for dealing with the effects at the Salton Sea.

“... the challenge is, end of this year mitigation water goes away and the rate of decline at the Salton Sea essentially triples.”

Michael Cohen, researcher with the Pacific Institute

During 2017, the district is releasing the final flows of mitigation water to the lake – an estimated 105,000 acre-feet, or 34 billion gallons. Then those flows will cease and the sea’s decline will accelerate.

Several years after the water transfer deal was signed, a 2007 state plan for the Salton Sea took an ambitious approach, calling for a horseshoe-shaped outer lake, a berm crossing the center of the lake, and an extensive system of dikes, channels and pumps. The plan included saltwater ponds to provide habitat and dust control projects on sections of exposed lakebed.

The total cost was estimated at $9 billion, and the Legislature never endorsed the plan. The difficulty of securing approval for such costly fixes has led state and local agencies to take a more pragmatic approach and offer scaled-down proposals.

The new plan – formally titled the Salton Sea Management Program Phase 1 10-Year Plan – draws on elements of the 2007 plan and other past proposals. It’s much cheaper, Wilcox said, because it requires less pumping and less construction of berms and other infrastructure.

Under the plan, water will be diverted from the Alamo and New rivers near the shore and channeled into networks of canals and ponds, largely flowing with gravity. Some water from the lake, which is saltier than the ocean and growing progressively saltier, will be pumped to ponds and mixed with the agricultural runoff to create a habitat for fish and birds that’s less saline than the rest of the lake.

Given limited funding, Wilcox said, “we recognize the need for an incremental project.” The canals and ponds will be built piece by piece, expanding across sections of the dry “playa” as more funding is provided.

By 2028, an estimated 48,300 acres of lakebed will be left dry around the receding lake, leaving dust laced with toxic heavy metals and pesticides that will be kicked up with the winds and float into surrounding communities.

The state’s program calls for building 29,800 acres of “constructed habitat” during next 10 years, covering up about 60 percent of the exposed playa. The ponds and wetlands will be built near rivers that flow into the lake on the north and south ends, while the west and east shores will be left dry, at least for now.

The state has hired a consultant, Tetra Tech, Inc., to design the projects. Construction is to begin next year on a section of the dry southern shore west of the mouth of the New River.

The plan also mentions other restoration projects, such as 500 acres of ponds and wetlands now under construction at Red Hill Bay on the south shore, and another project on the north shore, where the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians plan to build shallow wetlands.

The document includes some elements previously proposed by the Imperial Irrigation District and Imperial County in a 2015 plan, including a requirement that the canals and ponds will be built to ensure access to areas where new geothermal plants could be built near the south shore.

A hard crust protrudes from the Salton Sea along portions of the shore at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area.

(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)

Political pressure

The plan includes detailed commitments by the state for the first time in years – an indication that the Imperial Irrigation District’s strategy of lobbying hard for state-led solutions appears to be paying off.

Kevin Kelley, the district’s general manager, had reviewed an earlier draft of the plan in December and said it lacked key details on funding and timing. He said this new version represents a marked improvement and “constitutes real progress toward the 10-year road map for restoration that we have been asking for.”

“And while we do not love this 10-year plan, we think that there’s still sufficient time to make it better,” Kelley said.

Among other issues, the only funding identified in the plan is the same $80 million that has already been budgeted, Kelley said. “And the acreage that they need to address each year in the next eight years is something like 3,000 to 5,000 acres a year, which is very aggressive, and it’s not going to be cheap.”

A day before the plan's release, the irrigation district and Imperial County filed a motion with the State Water Resources Control Board requesting a hearing within the next four months. The agencies want the board to order the completion of a final plan by Oct. 1 and are seeking more specifics, such as acreages of projects for each year, actions to obtain additional funding and a statement “affirming the state’s obligation to restore the Salton Sea.”

The motion by the two agencies follows their 2014 petition to the same board pressing for action by the state. Kelley said the motion for an evidentiary hearing “can serve as a complement in reaching our shared goal, which is a smaller but sustainable Salton Sea.”

Last year, the irrigation district’s leaders demanded the state present a credible “road map” and said they will only be able to participate in a drought deal for the Colorado River once there is a viable Salton Sea plan. Under the proposed Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan, California water districts would pitch in by temporarily taking less water from the river to boost the levels of Lake Mead and avert a more severe shortage.

It has yet to be seen whether the new Salton Sea plan “delivers on the sort of confidence that we’re going to need” to participate in such a deal, Kelley said.

“What we’re going to need to see is some sort of commitment that signals that future administrations and future Legislatures will attach the same level of urgency and the same strong intentions to the problem as this administration has,” Kelley said. “How do we get at a durable 10-year plan that the region can have confidence in? And I think that’s still to be determined.”

The body of a dead bird decomposes in the sun near North Shore at the Salton Sea, August 5, 2016.

(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Rapid declines coming soon

The Salton Sea, a terminal lake with no outlet, lies 235 feet below sea level in one of the hottest places in North America, where searing temperatures evaporate huge quantities of water, leaving growing concentrations of salt.

The lake is now about 35 miles long and 15 miles wide. It’s projected to shrink during the next 30 years to about two-thirds of its current size.

That substantial gap between the areas of dry playa left exposed and the areas where ponds will be built is a concern, Wilcox acknowledged, and the plan is to use other waterless dust control measures on the uncovered portions of lakebed.

Those other methods include plowing stretches of the shoreline to create dust-trapping ridges; spraying chemicals to create a hard crust; finding salt-tolerant plans that will take root; or even laying down bales of hay, logs or woodchips on the sand to create windbreaks.

“We’re short of funding. We know that and we’re looking at other funding sources right now,” Wilcox said. “It is a pretty significant funding shortfall.”

He said that as the state is successful in rolling out the first portion of the plan, it should become easier to convince state and federal agencies that more funding is warranted.

With the deadline looming for the sea’s inflows to abruptly decline at the end of this year, there has recently been a flurry of activity by state and federal officials to step up their efforts.

The state formed a Salton Sea task force, and the federal government pledged in a “memorandum of understanding” last year to work together with the state and spend $30 million over the next 10 years to help speed up projects at the lake.

Then-President Barack Obama weighed in last summer, saying: "We’re going to reverse the deterioration of the Salton Sea before it is too late.”

The first $3 million of that federal funding pledge has been included in the Bureau of Reclamation’s proposed budget for 2018.

Other funding may come from nonprofits. The Water Funder Initiative, for one, has pledged to raise $10 million to support efforts at the Salton Sea.

The growing consensus around the need for urgent solutions has followed increasing calls by environmental groups and public health advocates, who have warned the costs of doing nothing would be monumental.

In 2014, the Pacific Institute issued a report warning that without significant steps to address the sea’s problems, Californians could face between $29 billion and $70 billion in costs, ranging from lower property values to higher health care costs for respiratory illnesses. The Oakland-based think tank said the exposed playa, if left exposed, could send as much as 100 tons of fine dust into the air each day.

Michael Cohen, a researcher with the Pacific Institute who has focused on the Salton Sea for years, said the state’s draft plan seems to be moving in the right direction but still lacks key details on the overall objectives, projects to be built, when those projects will be built and the costs.

“This is certainly a good step forward from where they were before, but I think they still have a little ways to go to make this a really useful plan. I think we’re still pretty shy of a plan here,” Cohen said.

“We should see this still as a work in progress and I think from that perspective it’s moving along. But the challenge is, end of this year mitigation water goes away and the rate of decline at the Salton Sea essentially triples,” Cohen said. “So we’re coming pretty fast on the tipping point and I think the immediacy of that problem is not reflected in this plan.”

Pelicans fly over the Salton Sea on May 20, 2016.

(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Touring the shoreline

Following the plan’s release, state lawmakers and officials from Sacramento visited the lake, where they toured a wetlands project under construction at Red Hill Bay. The visitors walked beside a boat ramp that has been left high and dry, and stepped out onto a stretch of the dry lakebed that is slated to be turned into ponds later this year.

“We’re behind. There isn’t any question about it. You can look up over my shoulder to see that,” Wilcox said, speaking to the group under a tent overlooking the sea. “But I think we’re in a place now where we can get caught up.”

The wetlands at Red Hill Bay are being built by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Imperial Irrigation District. Wilcox motioned to the dusty lakebed and said: “That’s all going to be reflooded for shallow bird habitat.”

Garcia praised the plan but said questions remain to be answered about the funding after the first four years and what role geothermal energy development could play as a funding source.

“The success of this visit will not be measured by how many people came here, but by the actual follow-up and follow-through – not only to this 10-year plan but an outline of what the long-term solution is,” Garcia said.

The legislators met with a group of high school students from Brawley, many of whom suffer from asthma.

“I’m here because I want to see change,” said Ramon Marquez, an 18-year-old student at Brawley Union High School who spoke to the crowd.

“As you can see, it’s drying up and it’s releasing a lot of toxic, hazardous dust into the air,” Marquez said. “I just don’t get why it’s taken so long for people to stand up and do something.”